Last year I was asked to repair the Minnesota RollerGirls T-Shirt Cannon that failed mid-season. I created a temporary fix, just in time before the game. The repair got us talking about the future of T-Shirt launching technology. What would make this cooler? How can we improve this technology to make Launcher 2.0?
Minnesota RollerGirls’ Wet Spot (Lucas Saugen) and I started brain storming. We met for lunch and started throwing around ideas.
What could we do better? In five years, where will the technology of T-Shirt launching be? How can we make sure that there wouldn’t be a T-Shirt Cannon technology gap at the Minnesota RollerGirls?
Also, how can we make it so that the darn thing doesn’t break every season.
This blog post details some of the build, process, and technology that went into making the new Raspberry Pi powered T-Shirt Cannon for the awesome Minnesota RollerGirls team!
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
